TTW#24 - Randy Gibson - Analog Apparitions
Cassette only - limited edition of 250 copies
SOLD OUT
Track listing:
A: The First Analog Pillar with its Simplest Primes and The Harbinger of The Second Pillar with The Low Madora Cornerstone and The Outlying Primal Cirrus from Apparitions of The Four Pillars
B: The Third Analog Pillar with its Lowest Primes and The Ersatz Souvenir of The Second Pillar with The High Madora Cornerstone and The Outlying Primal Abyss from Apparitions of The Four Pillars.
Recorded on a Marantz PMD222 with Maxell UR-90 cassettes Brooklyn, NY VI-xix-2010 to VII-xxiv-2010. Randy Gibson: just intonation toy organs, voice; Drew Blumberg: cassette boomboxes; Laine Rettmer: voice (B).
Illustration – Oscar Henriquez.
Analog Apparitions, by Brooklyn-based composer Randy Gibson, is a pair of 30-minute compositions designed specifically to be recorded and released on cassette tape. A student of seminal Minimalist composer La Monte Young, Gibson follows in the tradition of prime harmonic just intonation pioneered by Young in the 1960s. Apparitions of the Four Pillars, the underlying composition on this tape, explores the depth of the harmonic series through standard just-intonation methods and the use of higher prime-harmonic relationships. In the eighteen hours of recordings layered onto the two sides of the cassette you can hear the mechanism of the tape itself, the evolution of improvisations over seven recording sessions, and the purity of sine waves in complex prime-harmonic relationships.
Read more about Analog Apparitions here, in Randy Gibson's own words.
Biography:
Randy Gibson is a composer and performer, living and working in New York City. He works with structure, evolutionary compositional models, and improvisation to create enveloping and ritualistic works in just intonation.
Gibson began his musical training at the age of six, studying percussion. In the summer of 1998, he travelled to Japan to study marimba with the great Keiko Abe. In early 2003, Gibson began composition studies in New York with seminal Minimalist pioneer La Monte Young. Continually humbling and revelatory, his studies with Young have brought greater clarity to his work, and reinforced his aesthetic convictions. Gibson combines live and electronic music, as well as aspects of the world music he has studied, most importantly Raga singing in the Kirana tradition with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, but also Balinese and Japanese music.
By presenting his work with visual elements and the markers of ritual (incense, lighting) Gibson is able to offer the audience a way into the right frame of mind to embrace stillness and become absorbed in the sound.
Gibson’s work has been performed at festivals around the world including the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art in Minnesota, The Internationale Tanzmesse NRW in Düsseldorf, The Boulder and Minnesota International Fringe Festivals, HOT DAM: the opening festival of the Denver Art Museum, the Sans Souci International Festival of Dance Cinema, the ISIM 3rd annual conference, the Erick Hawkins Legacy Forum in New York, the 2010 Korea Experimental Arts Festival in Seoul, and the 44th Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt.
Gibson is the artistic director of Avant Media, a non-profit organisation dedicated to collaborative artistic endeavours.
Reviews
Boomkat (UK):
Heavyweight harmonic drones from the always surprising Tapeworm imprint. Brooklyn-based composer, Randy Gibson, was a student of famed minimalist La Monte Young and his two compositions here are firmly rooted in the studied traditions of his tutor. Given the quite specific titles of “The First Analog Pillar with its Simplest Primes and The Harbinger of The Second Pillar with The Low Modora Cornerstone and The Outlying Primal Cirrus from Apparitions of The Four Pillars”, and “The Third Analog Pillar with its Lowest Primes and The Ersatz Souvenir of The Second Pillar with The High Madora Cornerstone and The Outlying Primal Abyss from Appararition of The Four Pillars” you basically know this guy isn't just f**king about. Crafted from eighteen hours of recordings layered over two sides, these compositions are concerned with the just-intonation and “purity of sine waves in complex prime-harmonic relationships” which sounds incredibly intimidating, but is actually quite beautiful, if you've ever succumbed to the work of La Monte Young, or felt your chakras quivering while listening to the likes of Eleh. The experience is ritualistic and enveloping and shouldn't be undertaken while operating heavy machinery.
Aquarius Records (US):
One of three new releases on UK cassette label The Tapeworm, this one featuring two sprawling side long excursions into just intonation drone from Brooklyn composer Randy Gibson, a student of legendary minimalist composer La Monte Young. Gibson fuses the traditional concepts of prime harmonic just intonation with modern tape manipulation, the tones as important as the mechanisms producing them, the sounds lush and layered, heaving and undulating, overtones and subtle sonic colors, rife with subtle shifts, tape speed inconsistencies, peppered with bits of hum and hiss, crunch and creak, a sound more organic and human than clinical and composed, the sounds seeming to breathe and expand, some serious deep kosmische drift for sure.
The two sides here are created from 18 hours of recordings condensed into two half hour epic swaths of deeeeeep rage like dronemusic, the sound constantly evolving and mutating and subtly shifting, from ethereal hazy shimmer to thick reverberating metallic buzz, a gorgeously expansive dronescape created using just voice, cassette boomboxes and just intonation toy organs. Wow.
Total deep drone blissout for sure. Essential listening for the aQ dronemusic faithful...
